Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Thomas H. McCall
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Appropriate Use ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Constructive Theology ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Theological Discourse

Recent years have seen the flowering of something called the “theological interpretation of Scripture.” This is, very roughly, what happens when biblical scholars and theologians alike read the Bible to see what it tells us about God. For several centuries, the discipline of biblical studies has been not only distinguished but also separated from theological discourse. There have been many notable exceptions, of course, but the all-too-common results have been these: biblical scholars often interpret the texts with other aims in mind (sometimes reading with a theological lens has been discouraged as unscholarly and thus improper), and theologians often do their work of constructive theology without serious engagement with biblical scholarship or even with the Christian Scriptures. Recent years have also seen the rise (or perhaps re-birth) of something now called “analytic theology.” Analytic theology is, very roughly, what happens when philosophers who are interested in doctrine and theologians who think that there is (or might be) value in the appropriate use of philosophical tools get together. It is now a burgeoning movement, and analytic theologians are making contributions on a wide range of issues and topics, and from a variety of perspectives and approaches. We have not, however, witnessed a great deal of interaction between those who engage in the theological interpretation of Scripture and those who practice analytic theology....

Modernity, History and the Theological Interpretation of the Bible

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel B. Green
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Constructive Theology ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Internal Relations

One of the more noticeable features of the landscape of theological studies, broadly conceived, is the trouble-some relationship between biblical studies and systematic or constructive theology. Following the programmatic comments of Colin Gunton, by ‘systematic theology’, I refer to that theology which is concerned (1) to elucidate in coherent fashion the internal relations of one aspect of belief to other potentially related beliefs; (2) to demonstrate an understanding of the relation between the content of theology and ‘the sources specific to the faith’; and (3) to evince an awareness of the relation between the content of theology and general claims for truth in human culture, not least those of philosophy and science. It is with this enterprise, the doing of systematic theology, that biblical studies has come in the last two centuries to have increasingly poor relations.

Moral Injury and Biblical Studies: An Early Sampling of Research and Emerging Trends

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
Brad E. Kelle
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Moral Injury ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Emerging Trends ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The World ◽  
Biblical Texts

Moral injury emerged within clinical psychology and related fields to refer to a non-physical wound (psychological and emotional pain and its effects) that results from the violation (by oneself or others) of a person’s deepest moral beliefs (about oneself, others, or the world). Originally conceived in the context of warfare, the notion has now expanded to include the morally damaging impact of various non-war-related experiences and circumstances. Since its inception, moral injury has been an intersectional and cross-disciplinary term and significant work has appeared in psychology, philosophy, medicine, spiritual/pastoral care, chaplaincy, and theology. Since 2015, biblical scholarship has engaged moral injury along two primary trajectories: 1) creative re-readings of biblical stories and characters informed by insights from moral injury; and 2) explorations of the postwar rituals and symbolic practices found in biblical texts and how they might connect to the felt needs of morally injured persons. These trajectories suggest that the engagement between the Bible and moral injury generates a two-way conversation in which moral injury can serve as a heuristic that brings new meanings out of biblical texts, and the critical study of biblical texts can contribute to the attempts to understand, identify, and heal moral injury.

The Orthodox Christians and the Bible

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. G. Roeber
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Biblical Study ◽  
English Translations ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
European Immigrants ◽  
History Of

Orthodox Christians (Eastern or Oriental) regard the Bible as an integral but not exclusive part of tradition. They have historically encountered the Bible primarily through their liturgical worship. No fixed “canon” describes the role of the Bible in Orthodoxy. The history of the Orthodox Bible in America moved in stages that reflected the mission to First Peoples, arrival of Middle Eastern and Eastern European immigrants, and the catastrophic impact of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia on Orthodox communities in America. Recovery from the fragmented, ethno-linguistic expressions of Orthodoxy occurred only after World War II. Orthodox biblical scholarship began in earnest in those years and today Orthodox biblical scholars participate in national and international biblical studies and incorporate scholarly approaches to biblical study with patristic commentary and perspectives. Parish-level studies and access to English translations have proliferated although New Testament studies continue to outpace attention given to the Hebrew Bible.

Returning To China: Biblical Interpretation in Postcolonial Hong Kong

1999 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Archie C.C. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Hybrid Identity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
New Framework

AbstractThe paper aims to construct a new framework for biblical studies from the context of postcolonial Hong Kong. While present biblical scholarship has largely depended on historical-critical exegesis, biblical scholars of Asia have begun to conceive a different approach to the Bible, because of not only a new context of reading, but also a radically different cultural-political location of the reader. This location, as it is now being formulated, is a reading between East and West, between the dominant interpretation and scholarship of the formerly colonial and Western cultures and the newly arising consciousness of emerging postcolonial identities in the histories and cultures of Asia. After about some 150 years of British colonial rule, the identity of being a people of Hong Kong is highly hybridised. It is a hybrid identity of being cultural Chinese and yet pragmatically British, both a strong sense of identification with China and an unexplainable fear of being national Chinese. Such location of a reader transforms one's understanding of a biblical text such as Isaiah 56-66 and sheds a new light on the meaning of the return in some of its major passages.

Jeremiah 37-52

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack R. Lundbom
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Large Collection ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
Divine Wrath ◽  
The Temple

Stirring words of the most outspoken of the Hebrew prophets are reexamined in this concluding volume of the esteemed Anchor Bible Commentary on Jeremiah. This final book of the three-volume Anchor Bible Commentary gives us translation and commentary on the concluding sixteen chapters of Jeremiah. Here, during Judah’s darkest days, when nationhood came to an end, Jeremiah with his people confronted the consequences of the nation’s sin, while at the same time reconstituting a remnant community with hopes to give Israel a future. Jeremiah preached that Israel’s God, Yahweh, was calling to account every nation on the Earth, even the nation chosen as his own. For the latter, Jeremiah was cast into a pit and left to die, only to be rescued by an Ethiopian eunuch. But the large collection of Foreign Nation Oracles in the book shows that other nations too were made to drink the cup of divine wrath, swollen as they were by wickedness, arrogant pride, and trust in their own gods. Yet the prophet who thundered Yahweh’s judgment was also the one who gave Israel’s remnant a hope for the future, expressed climactically in a new and eternal covenant for future days. Here too is the only report in the Bible of an accredited scribe writing up a scroll of oracles for public reading at the Temple. This magisterial work of scholarship is sure to be essential to any biblical studies curriculum. Jeremiah 37-52 draws on the best biblical scholarship to further our understanding of this preeminent prophet and his message to the world.

Disability Studies and Biblical Studies: Retrospectives and Prospects

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 343-354
Author(s):  
Hector Avalos
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Future

The integration of the field of disability studies with biblical scholarship has grown rapidly since the 1990s. This essay provides an overview of some of the main developments and explores some directions for the future. The essay suggests that the primary challenge is integrating disability studies and health care into standard college introductions to the Bible.

The Bible as a Document of the Church: A Personal View

2016 ◽  
Vol 128 (6) ◽  
pp. 276-285
Author(s):  
George G. Nicol
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Personal View ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Church

Following some general remarks on recent significant trends in biblical studies, I note that these will exacerbate the gulf between church and academy with respect to biblical interpretation. A brief introduction to the official documents of the Church of Scotland shows that they provide little indication of how the Bible should be interpreted as a document of the church. In view of the ideological nature of many of the biblical texts an argument against too ready recourse to theological interpretation is outlined.

Theology and the Historical-Critical Study of the Bible

2011 ◽  
Vol 104 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Capetz
Keyword(s):  
Family Resemblance ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Salient Characteristic ◽  
Critical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Scholar

One salient characteristic of our current situation is the emergence of a growing consensus among theologians and biblical scholars alike that the time has come to “dethrone” historical criticism as the reigning paradigm of scriptural exegesis for the sake of recovering a theological interpretation of the Bible on behalf of the church.1 To illustrate this new development, I have chosen to focus on the arguments of three prominent biblical scholars, each of whom has made a sustained case about the negative effects of historical criticism upon theological exegesis: They are Brevard S. Childs, Christopher R. Seitz, and Dale B. Martin. All three scholars have close ties to Yale and, not surprisingly, they bear a sort of family resemblance to one another inasmuch as their work partakes of theological themes and concerns that have been prominent at that school in recent decades. Notwithstanding their antagonistic posture toward historical criticism, all three are gifted practitioners of the very method whose dominance they seek to overturn. Since I am not a biblical scholar, I must enter into discussion with them as a theologian who is equally concerned about the relations between biblical studies and theology. At the outset, however, it is necessary to clarify that my own theological orientation prevents me from embracing their call to depose historical criticism. As a liberal Protestant for whom historical-critical interpretation of both the biblical and the post-biblical tradition is constitutive of theology's proper task, their initial premise that historical criticism is somehow inimical to a theological treatment of the Bible strikes me as false and misleading. Contrary to the impression given by their explicit formulations, it appears that the real target of their polemics is not historical scholarship per se but, rather, the normative uses to which it is put in theologies informed by it.

Brevard Childs and the treasures of darkness

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Collin Cornell
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
1 Kings

AbstractContemporary biblical studies is populated by ‘comparativists’ and ‘theological interpreters’: scholars who read the Bible in the context of ancient artefacts, and scholars who read it in the context of Christian theology, respectively. These camps relate to one another mostly by feuding – or by mutual avoidance. The Old Testament theologian Brevard Childs is usually taken as a champion in the cause of theological interpretation, and so also as reinforcing one side of the disciplinary division. But under certain conditions, Childs also authorised the use of ancient artefacts (‘the treasures of darkness’) for reading scripture theologically. This article reactivates the latter possibility within Childs’ interpretive programme, especially through two cases studies: the first by Childs himself, when he uses the Sargon Legend to interpret Exodus 2; and the second a reprise of Childs’ procedure, using the Mesha Inscription to interpret 1 Kings 22.

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